Artist: Various
Album: Born to Be Blue: Music from the Motion Picture
Genre: Mainstream Jazz, Cool, Soundtrack
Label: Rhino Records
Released: 2016
Quality: FLAC (tracks+.cue)
Tracklist:
- Ethan Hawke with the David Braid Quartet - My Funny Valentine
- David Braid - Over the Rainbow
- David Braid - Let's Get Lost
- David Braid - Ko-Opt
- David Braid & Strings - Could Have Been
- Ethan Hawke with the David Braid Quartet - I've Never Been in Love Before
- David Braid & Strings - Once Away
- David Braid - Blue Room
- Charles Mingus - Haitian Fight Song
- David Braid - Bowling Alley Boogie
- Odetta - Go Down Sunshine
- David Braid - Tequila Earworm
- David Braid - A Small Hotel
- David Braid - Born to Be Blue
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- Personnel:
- Ethan Hawke - vocals (1, 6),
- David Braid - piano,
- Kevin Turcotte - trumpet,
- Steve Wallace - bass,
- Terry Clarke - drums,
- Mike Murley - baritone saxophone (4, 8),
- Kelsey Grant - trombone (12),
- Ted Quinlan - guitar (12),
- Epoque Orchestra Prague - strings (5, 7),
Charles Mingus band (9): - Charles Mingus - bass,
- Curtis Porter - saxophone,
- Jimmy Knepper - trombone,
- Wade Legge - piano,
- Dannie Richmond - drums,
- - Odetta - vocal (11)
The soundtrack to the 2015 jazz biopic Born to Be Blue features music that strongly evinces, but never quite lives up to, the sound of the film's main protagonist, the late trumpeter/vocalist Chet Baker. Starring Ethan Hawke as Baker and directed by Robert Budreau, Born to Be Blue is a semi-fictitious retelling of Baker's life set during his career comeback in the 1960s. Blessed with movie star good looks, a warm, lyrical trumpet style, and an equally supple voice, Baker was a jazz star during the '50s. Influenced by the spare melodicism of trumpeter Miles Davis, Baker rose to fame and helped popularize the "cool" West Coast style of acoustic jazz. He was also a notorious heroin addict who spent much of his career touring in Europe as a kind of cult jazz legend; a status only magnified by his mysterious death after falling from a window in Amsterdam in 1988. Interestingly, whether due to rights issues or a creative choice, Budreau didn't use any actual Baker recordings on the soundtrack. Instead, he employed Canadian pianist David Braid and trumpeter Kevin Turcotte to record soundalike versions of songs strongly associated with Baker during his career. As these are jazz standards, and not songs composed by Baker, Braid and Turcotte are free to re-create Baker's recordings replete with what are essentially transcriptions of Baker's original solos. While the results are well-crafted and convincing, they are also brief. Some, like "Let's Get Lost," clock in around two minutes, just long enough for Turcotte to play the melody, a single Baker chorus, and quickly end the song before the illusion is shattered. In that sense, the recordings come off like ersatz museum pieces, intended less as music to listen to, and more as functional bits of window dressing to move the plot along. There are also a few new Braid compositions, as well as period-specific cuts from Odetta and Charles Mingus. Much more intriguing are the two recordings featuring Hawke on vocals, including a surprisingly effective take on Baker's most identifiable recording, "My Funny Valentine." As Baker sang in a naturalistic, unaffected manner, Hawke's own delicate, softly wavering tone is a good fit. What he lacks of the jazz icon's warmth and rhythmic lilt, he makes up for by conjuring Baker's blithe, tragic romantic swoon.
Review by Matt Collar